For more than 400 years, the Mother Vineyard Scuppernong grape vine, part of the Muscadine species, on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, has produced succulent bronze-colored fruit and still does. In 1584, English explorers Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, the first explorers sent to the New World by Sir Walter Raleigh under the auspices of Queen Elizabeth, arrived on Roanoke Island, and Barlowe wrote that the land was so full of grapes across sands, hills, plains, shrubs, and high cedars that he thought no equal abundance could be found anywhere in the world. Whether the Mother Vine flourishing on Roanoke Island today is truly a remnant of the 16th century cannot be determined with certainty without damaging it to date it, but it is known to have existed in the late 1700's. William C. Etheridge, whose family had ties to the vine in the 18th century, wrote in his pamphlet The Mystery of Mother Vineyard that it was probably planted around 1587 - 1589. Whatever its exact origin, it is regarded as a living descendant of the oldest living fruit plant on the face of the earth, and the Scuppernong is the official state fruit of North Carolina.